Food writing

Well, my friends, what you have here is a bunch of cookbook covers--some twice or more for reasons I don't understand. I finally did drag them to the appropriate places, but I can't figure out how to get rid of the extra jackets at the bottom. It's very late, and I've been to a party, had a bit of wine, and am too tired to deal with it. So please ignore the extra jackets at the bottom. I'll figure this out another day.

As I said yesterday it was time to update my web page. Since my writing career is pretty static now, except for projects in process, I don't have much  reason to update--but I figure I can at least change the recipe page. This time I didn't write recipes--I wrote about books on food I've enjoyed lately. And I'm being lazy and copying the update here for a blog post. Maybe this will send some of you to my web page--http://www.judyalter.com. I'd love your comments.

Right now, I’m reading The Art of Eating In by Cathy Erway (New York: Penguin, 2009). A youngish career woman in Manhattan decides to give up eating in restaurants or buying takeout for two years—this in a city where eating out is the lifestyle. She began with a blog, “Not Eating Out in New York” that is still up and running and offers all kinds of sub-sites to explore. The book is not just a collection of blogs, but a chronological following of the development of her experiment. When she first started a friend sent her a recipe for squash biscuit. It called for yeast. She didn’t know what yeast was. I can’t tell you much more than that, because I haven’t gotten very far into it. But the narrative is charming and honest, and there are enough recipes scattered throughout to keep cooks happy.
A book I bought for the title: I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, by Giulia Melucci ((New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2010). Giulia takes us through several of her romances—she too is in Manhattan—and the things she cooked for the men in her life. Lots of recipes here, some from her Italian background, some even garnered from boyfriends’ families, some from friends. I photocopied a lot for my own recipe collection, from simple tomato sauce and pasta for two to angel hair pasta with asparagus and her father’s rather unusual minestrone. But it’s not all Italian—there are recipes for meat loaf, pumpkin bread, “unforgettable halibut,” “frugal frittata,” farfelle with zucchini and egg, pork teriyaki, a cosmopolitan collection. Along the way the reader follows Giulia’s unsuccessful relationships with guys that will make most of you want to say, “Ditch that loser!” In the final chapter, after the departure of the last boyfriend, she turns to pasta, confessing that she never made pasta from scratch—and she delves into that subject. Giulia Melucci may not be much at romantic relationships (I’m still crossing my fingers for her), but she’s a great cook and a good writer.

A book that made a lasting impact on me was Jam Today: A Diary of Cooking With What You’ve Got, by Tod Davies (Exterminating Angel Press, 2009). I must have flagged at least fifteen pages with cooking ideas (there are few recipes, just descriptions) and given ten copies of the book as Christmas presents last year. Davies has an undeniable advantage over most of us: her vegetarian husband has a bountiful vegetable garden, so she can simply walk into the garden and see what looks good that night. She’ll mix whole wheat pasta with butter and shredded cheese and then add bits of whatever cheese she has on hand—Morbier (fat and creamy), Gorgonzola, Parmesan, some Salem Blue. On the side that night she had a sliced tomato that she salted, covered with rocket (a leafy green with a strong flavor) and spritzed with lemon—she let that marinate while she fixed the pasta. How about a meal of eggs poached in a roast tomato/chipotle chili sauce, black beans refried, and avocado/jalapeno/cilantro/scallion lime salad? She describes how to cook one of my favorites: beets with greens, served with vinaigrette. Eggs scrambled with cheese and white wine, put on baguettes, and baked in a skillet till the cheese melts. You get the idea—simple, no-fuss cooking.

A cooking day and my writing dilemma

It's disconcerting to say the least to have a three-year-old look look at you early in the morning and say, "Your house is dirty." I think (hope) he was referring to the permanent gouges in the 80-year-old tile floor in my bathroom. Still, when his mother asked why he said that, I replied, "Because it is." Neat? Yes. Clean? Not quite. Needs a good cleaning.

Today was a cooking day. I had my standard Saturday lunch--tuna salad from the market, grape tomatoes, and hearts of palm. But after a nice nap, I put together a meatloaf for Jacob and Christian tomorrow night. I'll stick it in the oven in the late afternoon, along with some baking potatoes--they can have sour cream, and I'll have yogurt on mine. I wanted to get it all done ahead of time because I'll have Jacob almost all day. But then for supper, I thought of Tod Davies' Jam Today and did not buy fresh seafood, my usual habit when I'm alone on a Saturday night. At first, I told myself I would invent my own meal without going back to read her recipes, but I weakened--I wanted to know what she did with sage and with beets. Central Market always has beets with lovely fresh beets with greens--today, for the first time ever, they had only beets, biggest beets I've ever seen, but no tops. So I roasted them in foil, skinned them, sliced, and while still warm put them in a simple vinaigrette. Hours later, cold, they were delicious and didn't leak red beet juice all over everything on the plate.

I had decided I'd have eggs, so before my neighbor came for a glass of wine, I laid out all my ingredients--three large mushrooms, sliced, some chopped scallions, smashed garlic cloves, butter, some Parmesan to grate, and three slivered sage leaves. Put the eggs out because somewhere I have it in my mind that warm eggs cook better than ones straight from the fridge. When I came to cooking it, I sauteed everything but the eggs and cheese in butter and olive oil. Then added the eggs, a bit of wine, and soft scrambled them--except they got away from me and weren't as creamy as I like them. You really have to watch every minute, and while I grated cheese, they started to turn hard. Still the flavor was good--mushrooms really dominated, along with garlic, but I honestly didn't taste the scallions or sage. I'll have to try the sage trick again--maybe using more. Maybe my sage doesn't have as much flavor. Don't know. Still it was a good supper, and I have come in under my Weight Watchers points--okay, I ate chocolate and got up to my limit. But you don't get credit for unused points, so why not?

I guess you would call me a foodie, though I'm not sure about the term. Central Market has little signs on some products that say "Foodie Choice" or "Foodie Find" and I think they have an army of foodies, who direct customers, etc. But fellow author Sylvia Dickey Smith sent me an article from the Austin American-Statesman about foodies who are sporting tattoos signifying their interest. A cook at Thai Fresh has an avocado on one arm and broccoli on the other; cupcakes are apparently not only popular as a newly rediscovered food but also as a tattoo, and one owner of a cupcake store sports egg beaters--of course, her husband is the tattoo artist. I want my children to rest assured--I will not be doing that.

Last night I wrote a difficult email to an author who had submitted a novel, telling her I didn't think it was for an academic press but more for a commercial one. I could, I said, send it out for critique, but I was fairly sure it would come back with extensive revisions recommended, at the least. She wrote back that she wanted to revise, wanted to make it the best she could, and would appreciate the critique. She said she could have sent it to her mystery publisher, and they would have published as is, but that's not what she wants. I really admire her attitude, so I'm going to send this one on for a second reading, though I indicated what I saw as a few problems.

Which brings me to my own dilemma. A publishing house has had the first in what I hope is a mystery series since January; in June, they asked to keep it a little longer, since they were waiting for a green light to acquire for 2011. I agreed. Last week they said they had only recently gotten the green light and were reading the manuscripts in the queue--mine was at the second level of review (not sure what that means). Meantime I'm not inspired to work on the sequel--although I could. I've cleared my desk of major projects--or at least have them done to a point I'm waiting on others before I can move ahead. So I've sort of got an empty desk--not a feeling I welcome. I can only read so much, and then I begin to feel guilty. I can and should clean closets, bookshelves, and finish the memory book that the kids gave me at retirement--those are probably the things I'll do. But I feel a new idea for a novel rattling around in the back of my brain. It just won't come to the front. Maybe some good cleaning and clearing will also help clear my brain. I do know the new novel will have to do with food.

My new favorite food book

I just finished reading what may be my all time favorite food book: Jam Today: A Diary of Cooking with What You'e Got by Tod Davies is and isn't a recipe book--okay, I put flags on no less than 20 things I want to try, but only in a few instances are there actual recipes. Mostly it's a one-way conversation, in which she tells us how she decided what to cook for dinner that night, how she chose the ingredients--usually based on what she had (caveat: her husband, a vegetarian, maintains an amazing garden of vegetables and herbs, which helps her a whole lot). But the whole thing is conversational, casual, friendly, as though she's inviting you into her home. They like sage a lot, so she slivers it, browns it in butter, and puts in it a lot of dishes--I have a thriving pot of sage on my front porch that I never do anything with, but I will now. She has lots of recipes for basil--and I have lots of basil, plus my neighbor has a lot more. The first dish I'm going to try is beets and greens--I was raised eating them, and I often cook them for myself, boiling the beets until the skin removes easily, slicing them and reheating with the greens until the greens wilt. I add a bit of butter and some lemon (Jamie used to like them with vinegar, the way his grandmother ate them, but not too long ago, as an adult, he decided he didn't like them any more). But Davies mixes cooled, diced beets (and she roasts rather than boiling) with a homemade vinaigrette, shreds the greens and sautees them, then mixes with olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.
Davies makes soup--there are at least two recipes for vegetable soup--but she makes it the way I used to when the children were at home. You save a little of this and a little of that--especially water from boiling or steaming vegetables (have you noticed that even when you steam broccoli or asparagus, the water turns green?). When the time is right, she throws it all in the soup pot, with whatever additions she has on hand--potatoes, turnips, yellow squash, lots of herbs.
She likes more hot pepper than I do, so I did skip over several of those recipes. And she uses parsley as lots more than decoration, which is about all I've ever done with it. In fact, at one point, out of lettuce but burdened with a whole lot of both curly and flat-leaf parsley, she makes a parsley salad. (I can never grow it because the slugs, beetles, whatever they are before they turn into butterflies, simply mow it down.) She mentions Welsh rarebit bu doesn't give a recipe--darn, I remember that from my childhood and have one recipe but would welcome another.
At the end of the book, she gives what is the most intriguing recipe of all--Cavalho Concado, or Tired Horses, from her Macanese grandmother. It's an hors d'oevres of ground chuck, flour, soy sauce, green onion, sugar and vinegar, served on small pieces of stale bread--or bread dried out in the oven. Sounds wonderful, but you might not need dinner afterward.
My cooking friends and family should all be warned they're getting this book for Christmas--it's a true treasure. I'll probably blog from time to time about the things I fix following her ideas. But I really want to learn to look in the fridge and on the front porch for herbs (which I underuse) and invent wonderful dishes with what I have. Oh, yes, she uses a lot of pasta, and a lot of farm fresh eggs.
And a note: the title comes from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, where the Queen says, "The rule is jam to-morrow and jam yesterday--but never jam to-day." Davies disagrees--and she says her cookbook is not really a cookbook, not really a memoir--it's an answer to the Queen. I like this lady and wish she lived closer than Oregon.
Her method reminds me of Jacques Pepin's fromage fort (strong cheese, I think) which uses all those bits of cheese in your fridge. Just put them in the processor with lots of garlic, fresh ground black pepper, and enough white wine to make it spreadable. If you put in Roquefort or Gorgonzola, that will dominate; if you use other cheeses, the flavor is totally different. It's good either way. Hmmm. I've got a bunch of cheese in the fridge--it may soon be time.